So now that you have spent money, resources, and time creating the impeccable marketing strategy for your business, you want your marketing message to resound well with your potential lead and customers-right?
However, communication is a form of art and without the right moves, it is unbelievably easy for your messages to get lost, or shunned altogether as the size of your addressees grows with time.
The larger is your audience, the broader are their needs, preferences, and opinions, which can put your marketing messages at risk of becoming irrelevant to the majority of the people that you are attempting to reach.
This is exactly where market segmentation strategies come into play, as segmenting is a crucial factor to reach your target markets globally.
Customer segmentation using an easy to use CRM tool allows businesses to focus their marketing efforts on individual segments of customers so that businesses can better accommodate their specific requirements, wants, and needs.
In other words, market segmentation strategies are ruled by a method that provides your business an advantage over the competition since it allows brands to prove to their potential customers that they understand and know what their customers need the best.
While the purpose of market segmentation is to provide tailored messages that will be received successfully by the audience, which is advantageous for brands that may have an offering in the marketplace which can boast of providing multiple benefits for different types of customers, according to Wikipedia market segmentation is a terminology that implies:
“Market segmentation is a process of dividing a heterogeneous market into relatively more homogenous segments base on certain parameters like geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral. It is the activity of dividing a broad consumer or business market, normally consisting of existing and potential customers, into sub-groups of consumers (known as segments) based on some type of shared characteristics.
In dividing or segmenting markets, researchers typically look for common characteristics such as shared needs, common interests, similar lifestyles, or even similar demographic profiles. The overall aim of segmentation is to identify high yield segments- that is, those segments that are likely to be the most profitable or that have growth potential – so that these can be selected for special attention (i.e. become target markets).”
Hence acknowledging the fact that you cannot be everything for everyone in the marketplace, and so as a marketer you just cannot solve everyone’s issues or appeal to every single person in your business space, this is exactly why market segmentation is such an effective business growth strategy to implement in most brand and businesses.
As you can be imagining by now, there are several approaches you can ensure when segmenting your target market or the database of leads, prospects, and customers stored in your CRM database.
So as one of the most popular vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM tools, learning from those who have done it right, let us walk you through the four key types of real-life examples of segmentation to help you get started.
Geographic Segmentation– This can be as general as a country or as specific as a particular neighborhood.
Demographic Segmentation– This type of information includes age, ethnicity, gender, occupation, etc.
Behavioral Segmentation– This includes buying patterns, attitudes, and knowledge towards products, brands, and services.
Psychographic Segmentation– Honing in on more psychological aspects, this segmentation includes lifestyle, values, social class, and personality patterns.
Now that you know the basics of market segmentation, it is time to focus on the most common mistakes marketers can do when segmenting their target market for the first time while implementing their market segmentation strategies.
1. Creating too small of segments
Once you are using a robust marketing CRM tool, even though it can be rather easy to do if you are trying to make sure that you have every last detail included while segmenting your targeted audience, nevertheless, if the segments that you create are too small, you will surely lose the buying power of those groups as well as create a segment with non-quantifiable metrics.
Therefore always remember that at the end of the day every single person is vastly different, and therefore you just cannot appeal to every aspect of every person stored in your business growth software’s database.
2. Not updating your strategies as your customer base changes over time
People change- and they change fast.
Therefore in your brand’s interest refresh your market segmentation strategies and resurvey its audience from time to time.
For this choose a cycle that makes sense for your brand and stick to it diligently. It can be a monthly refresh, or you can even do it every year.
In other words, whenever you see a big change within your customer-base, perform a refresh then immediately to keep your market segmentation strategies working as your audience changes over time.
2. Targeting the segment instead of the money
Finally, as a marketer, you might have segmented a large customer base that aligns with your businesses’ strategies, but if that specific segment does not have the purchasing power or a real need for your offerings, then it is imperative that you will not garner any positive ROI.
Now, since marketing segmentation can be a complicated and laborious task, these mistakes in the beginning stages might seem inevitable.
Nevertheless, being aware of the three common pitfalls will surely better prepare you and your teams so that they do not fall into these snares in the future.
It is time to put what you have learned to use. Here are five steps that lay the process out. However, before getting started, consider using marketing CRM software solutions to streamline and measure your efforts effectively. Since as your strategy becomes more complex and your campaigns grow larger, you will be happy with the amount of time and resources you were able to save from having everything automated from the very beginning.
Define your market
Where does your brand fit within the current market landscape? Is there a need for the solution you promise to provide? How large is the market? These are all important questions to consider when starting this step.
Segment your market
This is where it gets fun. Decide which of the four segmentation methods you are going to use, but do not feel confined by one segmentation method.
It is common for brands to implement more than one segmentation technique and take a combination approach, so play around with each and find the perfect mix for your brand.
Understand your market
Ask your target market the questions that relate to the segmentation categories you chose. You should get to know your target market through and through at this step. You can use surveys, focus groups, polls, and more to obtain your answers. Make sure you are asking questions that will provide quantifiable answers.
Build your customer segments
Interpret the responses you received to create dynamic customer segments that are unique to your brand. Make sure that you are focusing on the buying power of the segments and not creating any that are too small. Look over the common mistakes one last time to ensure you are not making any of the above-stated mistakes.
Test your strategy
Ensure that you have interpreted your responses accurately by testing it on your target market. Implement conversion tracking early. It is one of the best ways to determine the effectiveness of your strategy.
If you are not relating to your customers with the segments you have created, then you will need to relook at your survey methods and analysis. Be sure that the strategy you choose has unique characteristics from others in the marketplace so you can stand out among the crowd.
Conclusion
Market segmentation strategies are highly admired skill-sets for every marketing team. It proves to your customers that you understand them by providing a tailored message that resonates with specific facets of their lives. Knowing how to get a message across successfully will help your brand grow exponentially.
Just remember, your success will not last long if you are not testing your strategy constantly. To be competitive you must always be on top of your game.
